Sonic More Music: Digging for Vinyl – It looks like an LP but it's really a 45...The 12" Single Years

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Digging for Vinyl – It looks like an LP but it's really a 45
...The 12" Single Years

I told this story to someone else recently so it's still fairly fresh in my mind; it was 1983 and I was still pretty wet behind the ears as far as music was concerned, what was out there, what to buy…that kind of stuff. A friend and I had decided to buy a new record, back then you would pool your money with someone else to buy some tunes, and if you were the one that had the turntable or tape deck it was yours…so we buy a copy of Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know" and in brackets it said (Monster Mix)….did not clue in to what that was about or that it only had 2 songs on it, one on each side, so be it, we took it home to spin. We were already familiar with the sounds of DD so when the needle dropped on the vinyl for the first time and it was this very slow, noisy, almost scary sounding song, not what we had expected, but since it did say (Monster Mix) we took it to be a "Scary" version of the song…..yes we were playing that 12" single not on the speed it was meant to be played (45 RPM) but on 33…we played it like that for about a week until one day one of us put it on after playing a 45 (7" to the kids out there) and it sounded like it should sound…..that was my introduction into the world of the 12" single.

What got me thinking about 12" singles again was the nice variety of them that Alleycats Music & Art here in Orillia had in stock when I visited last week. They had everything from Blue Peter's "Don't Walk Past" to Laurie Anderson's "O Superman", even some Howard Jones and some Heaven 17….all of which back in tha day would have been spinning on my turntable, who am I kidding if they were at my place I'd spin them today.

The attraction for me to the 12" or EP was there was always something new or different on it, the record that the original song had come off of had probably already been out for a bit and if you were a fan of the band you were chomping at the bit for more from them, so when you got a new EP there was always the "Extended Dance mix" or the "Monster Mix" , or you might have tracks that were only exclusive to the 12" single…and sometimes those were the ones that I'd play the crap out of.

My find for this week was the Depeche Mode 12" for "Enjoy The Silence (The Quad: Final Mix)", that came out in 1990 and what makes this one so special is its Single Sided, the one side has the song and the other side has a huge DM with a rose etched into the vinyl…look at the pictures I have provided. Not only does it look very cool (always a selling point) but the 15 minute remix of "Enjoy The Silence" is killer…..I played it about 4 times in a row this morning and could not get sick of it, always a sign of a good find.